At the beginning of the project, we purposely didn't want to include too much of a narrative so that the focus was on the performance, however, after advice from our teachers we feel that for our song, a narrative is necessary.
Our song has a mainstream sound and therefore we must adhere to some conventions of these videos. In all of the ones we have looked at there is always some kind of narrative element and it is usually an equal ratio of narrative and performance. Therefore I will look at some narrations in video to assess what type of idea we could do.
As I have already analysed the video as a whole I have decided to conduct some deeper analysis into the narrative element. The concept of the song is fairly similar to ours as well as the actual sound of the song. Kelly's video has a similar idea that we had of including flashbacks.
The song alludes to the idea of two children being friends and we discover that they are the couple in the video- Kelly and her boyfriend. The narrative is able to be identified from the performance through the subtle change of effects; in the picture below the contrast filter is intensified.
The song alludes to the idea of two children being friends and we discover that they are the couple in the video- Kelly and her boyfriend. The narrative is able to be identified from the performance through the subtle change of effects; in the picture below the contrast filter is intensified.
The video fluctuates between narrative shots and performance through cuts however it effectively connects the flashback scenes with the present narrative scenes. One occasion where is shown in when the camera zooms in on the young girl's necklace and then it zooms out to shows the same necklace on Kelly's arm in a new shot. This creates a synergy so that the audience is able to identify the little girl as Kelly. There are other effective ways that the video shows this and this will encourage us to come up with our own ideas from the shift between present and flashbacks.
The main storyline in Kelly's video links very well with the song as it has a playful overtone. The narrative mainly consists of Kelly and her boyfriend always disagreeing and arguing however the song is quite upbeat and so they are playful with the concept so as to not make it too heavy. Therefore there are such scenes as teasing her boyfriend with his keys and throwing items out of their apartment window. These short pieces of narrative give a reason to the song and they link with the concept very well because even though the couple fall out and have their difference, ultimately '[her] life would such without [him]' (shown at the very end of the song when they make up and kiss). The narrative therefore shows a progression of examples of the song however at the end the concept is resolved and this is something that we need to consider about our piece - resolving the conflict in the song. This follows Andrew Goodwin's theory that the music video is meant to illustrate the audio of a song.
Therefore after looking at Kelly Clarkson's video is has helped us to consider aspects of our own video. As her song, like ours, has an upbeat tempo we need to keep this in mind when storyboarding the acting that our characters will do, making it more playful so as to not give too much of a serious tone to the song. However our song is different in the way that Kelly's message is that although they argue they can't live without each other. However our song is aimed towards the artist's ex-boyfriend, telling him how selfish he is. Therefore we have the task of showing a fun/upbeat narrative but at the same time showing the couple to be dysfunctional.
Additionally from Kelly's piece we feel inspired to experiment with shots to show our technological skills in presenting a synergy between flashbacks and narration. Therefore even though we have a mainstream song and may have to use conventions such as a flashback narrative, we still have the opportunity to deviate and play around with ideas of how to move from performance to narrative and other post-production effects.
Our Initial ideas for a narrative:
- We have definitely decided to use the idea of a flashback however we are still going to discuss what to have in the flashback, whether showing the couple in love, or to show them arguing.
- We had the idea of a Goose chase concept where the boyfriend would be constantly running after the girl. However we think the idea may be too 'cheesy' and it has already been done before in such videos as Avril Lavigne's 'What the Hell'.
- The idea of a resolution was suggested and we had an idea of showing the girl walking off with a new boyfriend. However there is a concern that this may be a bad influence for teenagers to relate to and the audience may see our artist in a bad light due to the connotations of her being the person to go with someone else. Therefore the idea was suggested to show the boyfriend in a bad light by presenting him to go off with another girl and although it fits with the revenge in the song, there is an issue of the concept being too heavy for an upbeat song.
- The idea we had of the artist walking along a street link very well with the flashbacks as she may be walking along a road as it reminds her of the past. This also will enable more movement within the frame so the scene is more engaging for an audience.
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